


Wordpicture: Prisoner #97N909, Tobias Beecher

by Deannie



Series: Wordpictures [8]
Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-21
Updated: 2003-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a thousand ways out of Oz. Cocaine, heroin, smack, crack, weed, acid, and booze... Hell, they're just for starters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wordpicture: Prisoner #97N909, Tobias Beecher

Prisons are meant to keep people in. They're built with high walls and chains and fences and guards and guns and cells, and they're supposed to make sure that the fuckers inside don't leave until the great and wonderful State says they can. Until they've done their time and "reformed." Give 'em all the time in the God damned world to "atone" for their crimes.  


Whatever the fuck that means.  


I can't reform. I can't atone. The ghost of one perfect little girl is always staring me in the face through a spider-webbed windshield, telling me what I already know.  


I took a life. A life that was pure and sweet and, for the moment, sinless. Though looking back, maybe I did her a favor. If the life of a rich, successful lawyer, such as myself, can turn to such complete shit, what's to say she'd've been any better?  


Fuck, you can't even stare at the wall here! You stare at the wall and you stare through it--straight into the cell of some other dumb fuck. Maybe someone who just screwed up, who made a mistake. You stare through the wall and you see yourself.  


And you suddenly remember that you don't have the energy anymore to cry for yourself.  


You can cry for your wife, for your kids, for the perfect little angel who went flying across your windshield when you were so drunk you almost didn't figure out you'd killed her... But yourself?  


Fuck you. Fuck you and your life and all the other dumbass punks who ended up in this glass-walled hell. Because They built the place to make sure you're never getting out.  


But they forgot one little thing, didn't they? Getting out doesn't mean you have to take your body with you.  


They're shitting themselves--there's a thousand ways out of Oz. Cocaine, heroin, smack, crack, weed, acid, and booze... Hell, they're just for starters. You can fuck your way out, suck your way out, do everyone and everything and cut and kill and maim and screw and love--  


The love's a bitch, though. Like wandering from one prison into another. A prison that makes you think it's paradise--until you see the fake walls and the fake love and the fucker in the corner laughing at you.  


And the crazy thing is, sometimes, you still want _that_ prison. Sometimes you dream about it and the gentle strokes he used to give you, before he fucked you over. Sometimes you'll take insanity over the nothing in your heart.  


Oh, insanity! Now that's a big way out, isn't it? Tried it once. Went round the fucking bend... and ended up right where I'd started. Some stupid, drunken, high-as-a-kite prag without a keeper.  


Insanity is over-rated.  


But even insanity doesn't matter. The escapes? They're all transitory. Sure, the shot in your arm or the dick in your mouth might make you forget, for a while. But you always wake up back in the shithole.  


And some days, you wonder why you bother to wake up at all.  


Because that's the real escape. That's the one that everyone knows, the one that keeps the razors sharp and the shoelaces knotted. We all know that one day, if the momentary feel of freedom gets to be more painful than the prison walls...  


...There's a knife for every prisoner in Oz. And any one can have your name on it--if you want it to.  


For now, I'll take the booze. Enough of it, and I can at least escape the night.

* * *  
The End


End file.
